


SV: Straitjacket

by fhsa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Angst, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-10
Updated: 2006-02-10
Packaged: 2019-02-05 17:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12798993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhsa_archivist/pseuds/fhsa_archivist
Summary: Have some mercy in your heart for my soul.





	SV: Straitjacket

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Haven, the archivist: This story was originally archived at [Fandom Haven Story Archive (FHSA)](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Haven_Story_Archive), was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2016. To preserve the archive, I began working with the OTW to transfer the stories to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. If you are this creator and the work hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Fandom Haven Story Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/fhsa/profile).

  
Author's notes: Before you read, let me say this: I am submitting this for criticism. There are some things I'm not sure Lex would say, and I'm significantly less confident in writing first person. I'm actually having difficulty going back to read it and edit, so I'm asking you, my good people, to comment, criticize, question, even compliment if you feel this deserves it.  


* * *

A straitjacket is intended to constrict, to control. It confines your body, restricting movement, stifling the very idea of freedom. Yet, simultaneously, it frees something else... the mind.

 

While in that straitjacket I pondered more than I ever would have thought it possible to ponder. I thought about things I had deluded myself into thinking were buried deeper within my memory than I could ever hope to retrieve. But hope is a ridiculously funny thing, and more fickle than one would expect. And when hope is realized... I have found that hope can die and be replaced with regret, anger, and desperation... replaced even with the wish that the hope had not been rewarded with action or truth.

 

I had hoped that you, anyone, would see me for who I truly am. Not a Luthor, but a friend. A human being trying to be the best person he could be when so much hatred was thrown his way, viciously, without consideration for the fact that I am not responsible for the world's evils. My father owns that title. He put me there, in that place, and you. You helped to put me there by letting one of my other hopes be realized - the hope that you would let me see the superhuman strength I have known all along you possessed. You are no mutant, Clark, no freak; not like me. No meteors rained down on you and changed who you are. The meteors only delivered you to this Earth. You are who you were born to be, but I. I do not even know who I am meant to be. My father wants me to be one thing, one of two things - his heir or his enemy, although it seems he considers me the latter. Why else would he have me put there, used my mind, the friendship he knows was between us, to get to you, put my own life and sanity at risk? Why was a curiousity worth more than his own son's life? I won't deny that I haven't been what he wanted me to be, nor that I have never accused him of wrong or foiled his plans, but none of that warrants the treatment I have received. Stay away from him, Clark; despite what has happened between us, I do care about your well being. It may not seem that way now, but what I have done, I have done for your own good. You have to know that.

 

Throughout my life I have been put through many tests, most engineered by my father. The tests were intended to test and improve my strength of mind, body, and spirit, to crush my ambition for anything but total control of myself and any situation in which I found myself. I failed the penultimate test. I failed by trusting you, by trusting my own eyes. I know what I saw two months ago, and I know what I saw two and a half years ago. You showed me the truth only to take it away. What worth has a truth that cannot be shared? What I saw was attributed to my supposed psychosis. They said the same thing about Eddie Cole when he claimed to see a ship fall from the sky, only he was smart enough not to tell what he'd seen to mental professionals while there was a gun in his hand after he'd killed a man. Is that what you wanted, Clark? Is that why you let me see the car hit you? My greatest regret is not keeping what I saw to myself, but then I would be in prison for murder instead of going even more crazy in a straitjacket in a hospital for the criminally insane. Were you that scared of me, Clark, that you wanted what my father wanted, to have me locked away without a key? Were you lying again when you said you believed me, believed in me, chose my cause over your parents' distrust and hatred of me? I always thought I could trust you, Kal, even when I knew you were lying to me. Your lies were always about hiding from me, not about deceiving me, but now, I don't know what to believe.

 

I may not know why we ended up where we are today, but I know that you have made your choice. I had no choice but to make mine. Preservation, Clark. You cannot blame me for choosing my own life over yours. I know you're alive, now. Not only because I have seen you - you still cannot hide from me, Kal - but because I left you where your parents could find you. My intention was not to kill you, only to incapacitate you. Don't you understand? Your home is the first place Lionel would look. It's where I stayed when Lucas superseded my place in the mansion, it's where I hid when I began to suspect the conspiracy my father created. Don't think Lionel doesn't know where I was, or that he isn't watching your every move now; he knows you better than your parents know you. And although I despise what you have done to me, how you have betrayed me even while your actions save me, you haven't earned what I know will be wrought when he chooses the moment to strike.

 

You don't seem to realize that rescuing me from Belle Reve cannot free us from the prison of my father's influence; that any contact between us will not be sought and exploited. He wants your secrets and my life. No doubt my incarceration will be struck from the records, but Lionel doesn't need me anymore. He has someone else with my ambitions and his lack of scruples. We are now the topic of the hunt, and we must be as cunning as he, or else we will be caught in his trap. Don't try to contact me, don't try to save me. Lionel will not be happy with a bird in the hand, and he already has that in you. He is only waiting for me to return to where you are that he might ensnare us in one fell swoop. If you want to live, if you want me to live, leave Smallville. Forget about me, and don't let anyone see what you can do.

 

I know what I have to do, Clark. By the time you finish reading this I know you'll try to find me, to stop me.

 

You won't succeed. I have already begun to use the lessons he himself has taught me. The prey is already weakening.

 

I am telling you this only because I know your conscience will suffer for it. Mine does not, and will not. But after what you have done to me, how you have abandoned me, it is only right that you know what your actions have wrought. Perhaps now you will think twice before trusting again.

 

May God have mercy on your soul.

 

(unsigned)

 

 

_This snippet is dedicated to off_that_bridge for encouraging me and [info]mistressace who has inspired me to great writing with her own wonderful fics._


End file.
